The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

302 the world according to monsantoProtection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, required breeders toindemnify farmers who had been “deceived” about the seeds they were soldwith respect to “yield, quality, pest resistance,” and so on. 20This was precisely the law that the Andhra Pradesh Commissioner ofAgriculture intended to apply. When he was unable to do so, he decided inMay 2005 to ban from the state three varieties of Bt cotton produced byMahyco Monsanto (which were introduced a short time later in the state ofMaharashtra). 21 In January 2006, the conflict with Monsanto reached a newstage: Agriculture Commissioner Raghuveera Reddy filed a complaint againstMahyco Monsanto with the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade PracticesCommission (MRTPC), the Indian body charged with regulating commercialpractices and antitrust laws, denouncing the exorbitant price of transgenicseeds as well as the monopoly established by the GMO giant on theIndian subcontinent. On May 11, 2006, the MRTPC found in favor of thecommissioner and required that the price of a 450-gram packet of seeds bereduced to the price Monsanto charged in the United States and China, amaximum of 750 rupees (as opposed to 1,850 rupees). Five days later, thecompany appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, but the appeal wasdismissed on the grounds that the decision was entirely a state matter. 22That was the situation when I got to Andhra Pradesh in December 2006.Mahyco Monsanto had finally lowered its seed price to the level demandedby the state government, but the conflict was far from over, because thethorny problem of financial compensation remained. “In January 2006,” KiranSakkhari told me, “the Agriculture Department threatened to cancel thecompany’s marketing licenses if it did not indemnify farmers for their lastthree harvests.”“But I thought Andhra Pradesh had banned three Bt cotton varieties in2005.”“That’s right. But Mahyco Monsanto immediately replaced them withnew transgenic varieties. The government was unable to stop it, short of askingNew Delhi to totally prohibit GMOs. And the result was just as catastrophic,as we showed in a second study. 23 This year there is a chance thatit will be even worse, because, as you can see in this field of Bollgard cotton,the plants have been attacked by a disease known as rhizoctonia, whichcauses rot in the section of the plant between the root and the stalk. Theplant eventually dries out and dies.“Farmers say they’ve never seen that,” Abdul Qayum said. “In our first